Seas of Crisis

In early summer 2012—almost a full year into the fighting — U.S. and other Allied personnel and their equipment are exhausted. Russia helps Germany and South Africa recover and reequip after each battle. Such biased trading by a neutral with only one side in a clash of belligerents is perfectly legal under international law. Repeated American diplomatic efforts to sway the Kremlin have failed completely.

With so many atom bombs set off at sea by both sides, and the oil slicks from many wrecked ships, oceanic environmental damage is rapidly growing severe. The repeated, ever-closer brushes with Armageddon have themselves become an intentional tool in the Axis’ war-fighting doctrine, a weapon of psychological terror like none ever seen before.

Then a destabilizing wild card was unmasked by surprise during combat: a whole new class of nuclear subs, with many breakthrough technologies, is being custom-built covertly in Russia exclusively for German use. This latest treacherous move by a coldly manipulative Moscow could tip the balance of power decisively. Allowing it to continue is militarily unacceptable in Washington. Something must be done to force the Russians to back off, and undermine Imperial Germany at her core — before the entire planet goes up in a forest of mushroom clouds and then freezes in a nuclear winter.

In this terrible new world war, with the mid-ocean’s surface a killing zone and elite commando teams sometimes more effective than whole armies, America’s last, best hope for enduring freedom lies with a special breed of fearless undersea warriors….

Chapter 1

Late June 2012

War isn’t hell, it’s worse than hell, Commander Jeffrey Fuller told himself. He sat alone in his captain’s stateroom on USS Challenger, whose ceramic composite hull helped her to be America’s most capable nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine. Jeffrey’s many successes, during tactical atomic combat at sea in a war that the Berlin-Boer Axis had started a year earlier, had made him one of the most highly decorated submariners in U.S. Navy history. But his Medal of Honor, his two Navy Crosses, his Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and his crew’s receipt of a Presidential Unit Citation all put together couldn’t dispel Jeffrey’s present dark mood.

Challenger was five days outbound from Pearl Harbor, deeply submerged and steaming due north, already past the Aleutian Islands chain that stretched between mainland Alaska and Siberia. She was bound for the New London submarine base, on Connecticut’s Thames River, having been sent by the shortest possible route: through the narrow Bering Strait choke point looming a few hundred miles ahead, separating the easternmost tip of pseudo-neutral Russia from Alaska’s desolate Cape Prince of Wales. Jeffrey would sail past Alaska and Arctic Canada. Then he’d sneak through the shallow waters between Canada and Greenland, into the Atlantic, to arrive at home port in two weeks for a reception he already dreaded.

There’d been no medals awaiting Jeffrey or his people at Pearl to recognize their newest accomplishments, despite an earlier message implying there would be. No one was allowed to go ashore. Challenger had been told to hide underwater, off Honolulu, taking on minimal supplies and spare parts via minisub. No admirals came to shake hands, no squadron commodore gave any pats on the back. And Jeffrey was sure he knew why.

He’d broken too many unwritten rules — too many even for him — on his latest mission spanning half the globe. He’d stepped on too many toes, made too many well-placed political enemies in Washington, while exercising initiative that had seemed to make sense at the time. In something that verged on a shouting match, he’d quashed an onboard CIA expert whose advice he was supposed to respect. On his own accord he’d clandestinely violated a crucial ally’s sovereignty, planting seeds for what could still become a disastrous diplomatic incident. Worst, while obeying ironclad orders to preserve his own ship’s stealth at all cost, he and everyone else on Challenger had had to listen, horrified, doing nothing but flee the fight while dozens of good men — friends and colleagues — died under Axis attack in the Med on another American submarine.

And when Challenger had arrived in Australia for crew leave, one of his star performers, Lieutenant Kathy Milgrom of the UK’s Royal Navy, who’d served as Challenger’s sonar officer on the ship’s most vital missions, had been summarily detached. Jumped two ranks to commander, she was now on the Allied naval staff in Sydney. This was terrific for Milgrom, Jeffrey felt delighted for her, but he’d been disturbed that he found out about it only after she got the orders directly and then told him; the way it was handled by the powers-that-be violated correct protocol.

Jeffrey listened to the steady rushing sound that came from the air-circulation vents in the overhead of his stateroom. The air inside the forward parts of Challenger was always cool, to keep the electronics from overheating. Jeffrey was used to it, but this evening for some strange reason he felt chilled. He looked up for a moment at the bluish glare of fluorescent fixtures, like plant grow lights to keep submariners healthy when deprived of sun for weeks on end. He glanced at the grayish flameproof linoleum squares that covered his stateroom deck, then gazed around at the fake-wood wainscoting veneer, and bright stainless steel, lining the four bulkheads of his tiny world.

Outside his shut door, in the narrow passageway, he heard crewmen hurrying about, headed to different stations to perform the myriad tasks that helped the ship run smoothly every second of every minute of every single day. There was no margin for error on a nuclear submarine. Jeffrey dearly loved this endless pressure, much as he’d grown accustomed to the constant, potentially killing squeeze of the ocean surrounding Challenger.

He sighed. On his last mission, it appeared, he’d gone too far in some ways, and not far enough in others. There’d be whispers in the corridors of the Pentagon that he was an uncontrollable cowboy, a commander who risked others’ lives to gain personal glory. Jeffrey knew he’d done the right thing at every stage of that mind- twisting mission, but what he knew inside didn’t count. He had to assume that he was bound now for some shore job far from the action. Soon another man would sit at this little fold-down desk, sleep in this austere rack, put up photos of wife and children, assert his own personality and habits onto the crew. Challenger would have a different captain, because Jeffrey’s run of luck as captain had finally run out.

Someone knocked. “Come in!”

His executive officer entered, Lieutenant Commander Jackson Jefferson Bell. A few inches taller than Jeffrey, but less naturally muscular, Bell was happily married and had a six-month-old son to look forward to seeing again. Cautious in his tactical thinking when Jeffrey was superaggressive, Bell complemented Jeffrey in the control room during combat. Often he’d played devil’s advocate in engagements where split seconds mattered, when the waters thundered outside the hull and Challenger shook from stem to stern as if tossed by an angry sea monster — and Jeffrey’s crew looked to him to somehow, some way, keep them alive, while an Axis skipper did his damnedest to smash their ship to pieces and slaughter every person aboard. That hair’s-breadth survival, so many times, brought Jeffrey and Bell very close.

Jeffrey grimaced to himself. Soon Bell will have a new boss.

Bell had arrived to give his regular 2000—8 P.M. — report as XO to his captain. Bell’s words about the ship’s status held no surprises. He wrapped up crisply and left, pulling the door shut behind him.

Jeffrey picked up his intercom handset for the control room. The messenger of the watch answered, one of the youngest and least experienced crewmen aboard. Jeffrey knew he was working hard to earn his silver dolphins, the coveted badge of a full-fledged enlisted submariner; officers wore gold. Jeffrey wondered if the messenger would survive this horrendous war or not — assuming civilization and humanity survived.

“Give me the Navigator, please.” Jeffrey kept his tone as even as he could.

“Wait one, sir,” the still-boyish voice of the teenage messenger said.

“Navigator here, Captain,” Jeffrey heard in his earpiece. Despite himself, he smiled. Lieutenant Richard Sessions was one of the most unflappable people he’d ever met, inside or outside the military. From a small town in Nebraska, Sessions was the type of guy whose hair and clothes were always a little sloppy, no matter what he did. But his indispensable work as head of the ship’s navigating department was without fail beautifully organized and precise.